Métier Records announces Uncertain Sea, choral music by John Casken

In March 2026, Métier Records presents a stunning album of choral music from Northumberland-based composer John Casken, inspired by the region’s magnificent landscape and coastline, its changing colours, history, and poetry. The recording features the Joyful Company of Singers under the direction of Peter Broadbent and reflects two years of working alongside the composer.

The album features evocative and powerful settings of poems by writers, from 7th-century Northumbrian cowherder Caedmon, to George Herbert, John Donne, Robert Burns, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Northumbrian poet Katrina Porteous, and John Casken himself. 

The album contains many Northumbrian connections, especially in the works written for choirs in Durham and Northumberland, including the Choir of Durham Cathedral and Newcastle Cathedral, Northern Sinfonia Chorus, and the choir John Casken himself started – Coquetdale Chamber Choir.

The works are grouped around timeless and deeply resonant themes, the headings drawn from within their texts: Northumberland’s seascape and dialect are central to Uncertain Sea, the single work in ‘Far from Land’. The focus of ‘Sacred Shaper’ is Christianity in early times, followed by an Easter sequence ‘Stone and Thorn’ and finally music of farewell ‘Fare thee weel’. Stones also play a part, whether rolling on the sea bed, in memorials of stone, ‘the stone rolled away from Christ’s tomb’, or as an allegory for virtues symbolised in the stone floor of a church. The choir takes up various roles – sometimes as the voice of a community, or as voices coming together to offer reflection, or simply to tell a story through the music. 

Uncertain Sea is the setting of two poems by Katrina Porteous about the difficult and precarious lives of the fishing community on the Northumbrian coast, the second written in Northumbrian dialect. For Dappled Things, after Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘Pied Beauty’ was composed as a 60^th birthday gift for James MacMillan. There are two settings of poems by George Herbert: each line of The Land of Spices offers a different metaphysical definition of the word ‘Prayer’; Floore of Allegories takes the church and its stone floor as an allegory for the virtues of Patience, Humilitie, Confidence, Love, and Charitie, with God as the architect.Caedmon’s Hymn is heard here in a unique translation of an early manuscript, by The Revd Canon Clare MacLaren, former Canon for Music and Liturgy of Newcastle Cathedral. From this Red Earth sets the first two poems of John Donne’s monumental, rich, and complex ‘A Litany’.

The Knight’s Stone, featuring a part for solo flute (Philippa Davies), alludes to early music in its setting of the 15^th century ‘Corpus Christi Carol’, with its vivid descriptions of the landscape and hall where the Christ-like knight lies dying. Sunrising, from a rare religious poem by Sylvia Townsend Warner, follows someone rising early, ‘in a morning mist…sorrowful’ to meet the risen Christ. Returning from the Tomb, with text from St Luke’s Gospel, tells of the women coming to Jesus’ tomb on Easter Sunday morning and finding the stone rolled away.

Ae fond kiss is a beautiful setting of Robert Burns’ poem, dwelling on lovers parting forever. The closing farewell, Memorial, is a powerful tribute to men from Upper Coquetdale in North Northumberland who perished during the First World War and who were never found. It holds up a mirror to the universal and tragic loss of loved ones, of neighbours as well as strangers, through war and conflict, and it seems especially relevant in today’s world. This is the largest of the works on the new CD, a work for choir, percussion and two solo singers (Rozanna Madylus, mezzo-soprano, and Marcus Farnsworth, baritone).

John Casken’s painting for the cover of this recording includes the stones of Dunstanburgh Castle bordering the seas; in Katrina Porteous’s words, ‘Black Dunstanburgh withstands/The waves, the years.’

The digital edition of the album contains two extra tracks – Tree of Angels for solo cello and organ and From One Thread for solo viola. These are performed by Kim Vaughan (cello) and Tom Wilkinson (organ), and Bridget Carey (viola).

UNCERTAIN SEA Choral Music by John Casken
Métier Records Catalogue No. MEX 77177
UPC No.809730711725
Joyful Company of Singers
Peter Broadbent (conductor)

Track Listing:
FAR FROM LAND
Uncertain Sea

SACRED SHAPER
For Dappled Things
The Land of Spices
Caedmon’s Hymn
From this Red Earth: I. The Father II. The Son
Floore of Allegories 

STONE AND THORN
Tree of Angels for cello and organ (digital edition only) – Kim Vaughan (cello), Tom Wilkinson (organ)
The Knight’s Stone – Philippa Davies (flute)
Returning from the Tomb 
Sunrising 

FARE THEE WEEL
From One Thread for solo viola (digital album only): Fantasia – Sarabande – Courante
Bridget Carey (viola)
Ae Fond Kiss 
Memorial – Rozanna Madylus (mezzo-soprano), Marcus Farnsworth (baritone), Owen Gunnell and Aaron Townsend (percussion)

From One Thread and the choral works on this album were recorded in the church of St John the Evangelist, Upper Norwood, on 21–2 and 29 September 2024

Tree of Angels was recorded in Morningside Parish Church, Edinburgh, on 21 January 2025
Recording engineer, editor and mastering: Vidda Lefeber

John Casken (b. 1949) is one of the most distinctive composers of his generation. His works range through every genre, and their titles reveal that he can be inspired by literature and legend as well as landscape and the visual arts. After studying at the University of Birmingham (1967–71), John Casken spent time in Warsaw, studying with Andrzej Dobrowolski at the Academy of Music; he also formed a long association and close friendship with the leading Polish composer Witold Lutosławski. John Casken became a Lecturer at the universities of Birmingham (1973–9) and Durham (1981–92), was a Research Fellow at Huddersfield Polytechnic (1980–81), and Professor of Music at the University of Manchester (1992–2008), with whom he retains strong links as Emeritus Professor of Music.

John Casken has had close associations with the Royal Northern Sinfonia, Hallé, and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras and has worked with the Nash Ensemble, Gould Piano Trio, and, particularly, with the Lindsay String Quartet and Quatuor Danel. Nine of his works have been performed at the BBC Proms, four of them BBC commissions. He has been a featured composer at several festivals in the UK, and his music has been performed at many international concerts and festivals. Casken’s first opera, Golem, has been seen in seven different productions internationally; his second opera, God’s Liar, was performed in London, Brussels, and Vienna. Golem won the first Britten Award in 1990; the orchestral song-cycle Still Mine was awarded the Prince Pierre de Monaco Prix de Composition Musicale in 1993; The Dream of the Rood for four voices and large ensemble won a British Composer Award in 2009; and in 2020 John Casken was awarded the first Tippett Medal by the Royal Musical Association for his chamber opera The Shackled King (based on King Lear). In 2024 he was invited to become Vice-President of the Joyful Company of Singers. John Casken lives in Wooler, North Northumberland. The area’s landscape, poetry and Early Christian history have influenced his works in different ways, forming a strong thread through his music, and his own paintings.

The Joyful Company of Singers (JCS) is a leading British amateur chamber choir, committed to performing a wide and challenging repertory of choral works from the 16th to the 21st centuries. Formed in 1988 by the conductor Peter Broadbent, the choir came to prominence when it won the 1990 Sainsbury’s Choir of the Year competition; it went on to win several national and international prizes. It has performed at most of the leading festivals in the UK and regularly tours in Europe, broadcasting abroad as well as for the BBC and Classic FM. It has worked with orchestras including the Britten Sinfonia, City of London Sinfonia, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Royal Philharmonic, London Philharmonic and Bournemouth Symphony Orchestras. JCS has gained a reputation for championing under-represented 20th-century choral works, particularly by British composers. Among those who have written music for it are Kerry Andrew, David Bedford, Richard Rodney Bennett, Michael Berkeley, Judith Bingham, Zoe Dixon (the first JCS Composer-in-Association), Jonathan Harvey, Alun Hoddinott, Tarik O’Regan, Roxanna Panufnik, Paul Reade, Giles Swayne, John Tavener and Malcolm Williamson. It has also given first performances of commissioned works by Dmitri Valentinovich Smirnov, Kaija Saariaho and Thierry Pécou.

A policy of encouraging young artists and composers has led not only to commissions but also to providing a Junior Fellowship for Young Conductors to gain experience in singing with and conducting JCS. Recording is an important part of the choir’s activity and its discography extends to over 25 albums. It frequently features previously unrecorded works, including music by Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Williamson, Jonathan Harvey, Havergal Brian and Roxanna Panufnik.

Peter Broadbent is the founder-conductor of the Joyful Company of Singers and a leading British choral conductor. He has conducted the London Mozart Players, Divertimenti Chamber Orchestra, the English Chamber Orchestra, the City of London Sinfonia, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the Southern Sinfonia, the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra, Apollo Voices and the BBC Singers; he broadcasts frequently for BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM. His engagements outside the UK include concerts with the Debrecen Philharmonic Orchestra and Kodály Chorus in Hungary, a broadcast with the National Chamber Choir in Dublin and a European tour with the World Youth Choir (2006). He gives workshops and masterclasses throughout Europe and was the first Director of Training for the Association of British Choral Directors. In 2007 he was presented with the Pro Cultura Hungarica Award by the Hungarian Ministry of Culture for his services to Anglo-Hungarian musical relations, and in early 2016 he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Hungarian Order of Merit. Peter Broadbent was made MBE in the 2022 New Year’s Honours List.